bshepp/cat-keyboard-corpus

Cat Keyboard Corpus

Messages typed by the cats, Giddings and Chester, on the keyboard of my Dell Latitude E6420 XFR laptop (US QWERTY), kept "for posterity".

Why this exists. My desk is where the sun is, and the cats have right of way. The laptop runs a long-term sensor project with an AI assistant, and rather than fence off their spot, I let them walk across it. Sometimes a message gets sent. This corpus keeps them.

About the authors. Giddings favours the B key and the semicolon, and likes to drink from the stream in the bathtub left by a brief run of the shower. Chester walks the keyboard often; his first message (2026-10-02) was a single "x", and he pressed Enter himself - the first message a cat sent on its own. He was also the first cat the project's camera ever recognized.

Fields (messages.jsonl)

field	meaning
id	running number
sent_at_utc	when the message reached the assistant (typing may have happened earlier; see time_quality)
text	the message exactly as received
author	the cat: giddings, chester, ..., or unknown when nobody saw which cat
sent_by	who pressed Enter: the cat's name, me, or unknown (recorded from message 5 on; earlier ones backfilled where I remembered)
cat_part	only where the text mixes my input and a cat's: the cat's part
kind	absent for a typed message; keys for a key event: control keys that did something but left no text (text is empty)
keys	for key events: the keys, as far as they can be told (nothing records keystrokes, so they come from the effects and from my own check of what recreates them)
effect	for key events: what happened
notes	context

Observations so far (13 messages + 1 key event, 856 typed cat keystrokes, 2026-10-03)

• Most-pressed keys: N (145), D (108), F (75), B (54), G (46) (Shift+B counted as B), plus 306 spaces.
• Messages 1-7, 13 and 14 are Giddings' (13 and 14 back on his B/N/M spot, bottom row); 8 and 9 are by an unknown cat (Giddings or Chester); 10 and 11 are Chester's ("x"; then 75 f's and a c, on the keys next to it).
• Giddings' early messages cluster on the bottom-middle keys (B/N/V/M), later ones on the bottom right (k l ; ' , . /, next to Enter), perhaps following where he steps onto the laptop.
• Messages 8 and 9 are held keys: one b + 114 n's; then 248 spaces, c, 107 d's, 46 g's, v, b - a slide across the middle of the keyboard (C and V/B on the bottom row, D and G on the home row), after a long press on the spacebar.
• One message has capital B's: a paw on Shift.
• sent_by: I pressed Enter 8 times; 4 are unknown; Chester sent message 10 himself, the first cat-sent message.
• Entry 12 is a key event, not a message: Giddings, Ctrl+C twice (confirmed afterwards: the only combination that recreates what I saw). It typed nothing and opened a session-select menu inside Claude Code instead; the running session was not closed.

Working notes: kinds of events (2026-10-03)

Not a field yet. We are still learning what happens, and the kind can be worked out from each entry.

name	what it is	entries so far
sit	a cat rests or walks on the keys, text piles up, a human sends it	1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14 (probably 2 and 4)
recall	the keys recall an earlier command (Up-arrow), then add text	3
self-send	the cat's keys include Enter	10
operate	control keys change what the program is doing; no text	12
mixed line	my text and a cat's on the same line	7

Not seen yet, or not noticed: edit (a cat deletes or changes what I typed), interrupt (keys that cancel something in progress), unsent (typed, then cleared by me - never recorded unless I mention it). A long run of one key is a paw resting; many different keys is a cat moving.

Who is involved: the two cats make the keystrokes; I am the witness (which cat, and often the one who presses Enter); the AI assistant keeps the record, and is not a neutral recorder - entry 12 needed two corrections because it filled in what it could not see. An event only gets here if Enter is pressed or I notice, so this is what the cats typed that got sent or witnessed, not everything they typed.

The unknown values of sent_by were most likely me pressing Enter, but I am not sure, so they stay unknown.

Collection

Messages are recorded as they arrive, with who wrote them and who pressed Enter. Desk changes that may affect the cats' routes are noted (2026-09-30: I cleared the desk). No other data about the household is included.

Changelog

• 2026-09-30: first release as giddings-keyboard (5 messages by Giddings).
• 2026-09-30: renamed to cat-keyboard-corpus so every cat fits; the card is in my own voice; sent_by value owner -> me.
• 2026-09-30: "the cats" instead of "my cats" (companions, not possessions).
• 2026-10-01: message 6 (Giddings, J/M/N); message 7 (mixed: my " mxc" typed on the wrong keyboard, then Giddings' run of C's and "dm").
• 2026-10-02: message 8 (unknown cat: 38 spaces, one b, then 114 n's - the longest message so far); observations recounted over all messages.
• 2026-10-02: message 9 (unknown cat: 248 spaces, c, 107 d's, 46 g's, v, b - now the longest; slides across the middle row).
• 2026-10-02: message 10: Chester's first, a single "x", sent by Chester himself (I didn't press Enter) - the first cat-sent message.
• 2026-10-03: message 11: Chester again, 75 f's and a c (I pressed Enter).
• 2026-10-03: entry 12, the first key event: Giddings, Ctrl+C twice - no text, but it opened a session-select menu inside Claude Code. New fields kind, keys, effect.
• 2026-10-03: entry 12 corrected twice: the keys are confirmed (Ctrl+C twice is the only combination that recreates what I saw), and the effect was a session-select menu inside the program - the session was never closed.
• 2026-10-03: working notes on the kinds of events (sit, recall, self-send, operate, mixed line), who is involved, and what never gets recorded.
• 2026-10-03: message 13: Giddings, a space, 12 m's, n, m and a comma (I pressed Enter).
• 2026-10-03: message 14: Giddings again, 11 n's, m, space, n, b, b (I pressed Enter).

License

CC BY 4.0.